My Mother died 26 years ago today, buried in the Collinsville Cemetery. A Graduate of CHS at age 17 in 1940, she was baptized in the Collinsville Baptist Church in 1936 or so.

Here is what my sister Marsha said about her today on Marsha's facebook wall:

26 years ago today, my mom, Elizabeth Jordan Fox, passed away. She was a strong woman, with a deep faith, heart of compassion and an unconditional love for all. She was resourceful, talented and fun. Her arms were always open to welcome and include all. She is loved and missed.

will be the Auburn Living Democracy rep in Collinsville this spring. Her task is literacy and she will be working with the Collinsville Library which has banned John Grisham's Oxford American Magazine.

AULD's sponsor is Mark Wilson, a Baptist historian in Bruce Gourley's group who signed the free conscience statement in 2010 distinguishing from the take of Duke's Curtis Freeman. Wilson chaired the search committee that brought new FBC Auburn pastor Tripp Martin to town last fall.

I am hoping Ms. McCauley can bear prophetic witness not only to the local librarian, but also to Bama House speaker Mike Hubbard of Auburn University whose Son Clayte is an incoming Freshman on golf scholarship at my and Marshall Frady's alma mater, Furman.

Steve Flowers columns in Times-Journal are entertaining, but sometimes ignorant to the point of being facetious. His recent column on the GOP was woefully unlearned and abysmal.

Saying Jeff Sessions is a True Republican and the furtherest thing there is from a Rino is a false premise. When I think of a Republican worthy of emulation I think of Abraham Lincoln, Judge Frank Johnson, or my Grandfather Jordan who ran for school board of DeKalb County in the nineteens and was soundly defeated.

Sessions is a false fulcrum. The true story on today's GOP is an easy google for Garry Wills at NYbooks.com. Wills review of Bama grad Joe Scarborough's recent book on the GOP tells the true history of how Lee Atwater mastered the race card with subtleties and the Rove the religion card and Mike Hubbard epitomizes the cauldron today.

There is no honor in today's GOP, just hypocrisy and ignorance and mendacity goaded by Fox News.

On Collinsville Baptist facebook wall they have a picture of the church bus taking a bunch of 5th graders to see God is Not Dead, the Mlovie. Nessa Chambers who is a force for the tea party and the legacy of Bill Fortner now in the church to my estimation of things, liked the photo.

Gone are the Sunday school days when the Morgan boys would come home from Yale and Duke and Uva and have a good sunday school lesson with Susan Weaver, Becky Kennedy and Mark Petty. I'm gone too. Now the church is left waffling with the most literate folks too weaselly or confused to espouse a true Baptist viewpoint that at one time was at least possible. Now it's Tea Party or Get out.

There never was a conversation ten years ago about the CBF pamphlet Stand with Christ. I doubt Nessa and the local librarian would allow an informed conversation about this piece. Even if they did whos's left to help them understand what they would be trying to think about?

Last October. His Son Clayte is going to Furman on a golf scholarship this fall.

Mike made the front page of the Bham News Sunday, five days before Charles Marsh is to hit town on his Bonhoeffer bio rollout.

Mike should do some therapy sessions there in Auburn with Wayne Flynt, Mark Wilson etc. Maybe Jen Wilkins can drive down for some sessions to discuss Oxford American and John Grisham and what it means to be a Baptist in Alabama and the Auburn Living Democracy Project. Maybe do some group reading of Molly Worthen's Apostles of Reason

Sunday May 11, Mother's Day. The question arose whether to move the annual event since 1949 or so to Saturday. There was a vote. Of the 35 odd there 15 voted to stay with the annual Sunday remembrance on MOther's Day with five for a move to Saturday. Obviously there were some abstentions. Among them appeared to be Thomas Barksdale. I voted with the majority with the school board candidate, Jeff Patton, also a minister's son. Donnie Myers voted with us.

After the meeting adjourned there was a rich moment of conversation when it surfaced the Grand American poet Emily Dickinson has direct family descendants in nearby Sand Rock Alabama. There was also chatter about Joe Williams, a grandson of slaves in the county, who played baseball in the old Negro Leagues with Willie Mayes in Birmingham. And, recent news there is a photo in the area of a former Mayor's Aunt with Eleanor Roosevelt. The Great Aunt of the current football coach, if not a personal assistant to Eleanor, was well acquainted with her.

Roger Dutton has stepped down from his two year tenure as Head of the Historical Association. His successor has yet to be chosen. Roger's Borther is director of missions for the contiguous county and a niece has participated in the Leading Edge Program as a junior at Samford University.

My grandmother and grandfather Jordan, his Brother, my Mother and father, and my mother's brother and sister are buried in the cemetery, as well as Aunt Sallie and some of her family.

And recent news is a former member of Collinsville Baptist is now a subscriber to Baptists Today; guest subscription by a Furman grad, not me. That raises the number to four former or current members of the church who are familiar with Baptists Today and laid eyes on a copy or two.

Also Auburn University Living Democracy project whose co-ordinator Mark Wilson is a colleague of Bruce Gourley in Baptist History circles; the AULD has announced Mary Beth Snow has received an award at Auburn for her civic work.. Ms Snow was in Collinsville most of the summer last year as part of the project. Her handlers here, rather her chief handler in the area was Jennifer Wilkins the Librarian who is a force in local civic life and the church, kind of a gatekeeper for all.

One of the more scarring moments in the sequence of events that led to my dismissal from the grounds of Collinsville Baptist church was the pastor's wife Gloria using her position on the platform as choir director to call me out one Sunday Morning. After she made reference to her offense--I remember she was in her choir robe--she came to me in the Greeting of friends clear to the right of the vestibule so everyone would know just who in her eyes the Judas Iscariot was.

A few days later, Donnie Myers served notice on me at the Public Library.

Gloria grew up in Nashville--Kate Campbell's Mother on one occasion played the piano for her in high school in some solo competition Gloria was in at Two Rivers BC--but has deep roots in Mississippi.

That is why I am publicly inviting her and her family to read Charles Marsh's The Last Days in tandem with Marsh new bio of Bonhoeffer. As I've mentioned before here on this board, Marsh emphasizes Bonhoeffer's trip through Alabama--he drove right through Collinsville on HWY 11--in April of 1931. Read the Last Dayss First.

Last Days is strong dose of medicine. Marsh dedicates it to his parents. His set up quote for the book is from Proverbs: "There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, yet not washed from their filthiness."

One of the Morgan's children and his wife were in conference with Marsh in Americus Georgia October 2012. In fact at one point Marsh's Mom and Dad and Morgan's oldest son and I were in the same room in a workshop.

Gloria Morgan will most likely have more stars in her crown on the great getting up morning than I will. Like Stewart Newman, me and my Dad's hero who stood up to WA Criswell, told me in Shoney's in Gaffney S.C. in 1977 when I was gettin a little self righteous about the potential of my generation; Newman looked me straight in the eye and said, given the circumstances I think we did alright for ourselves.

Both things are true, Newman and Marsh's book.

I hope the entire Morgan family, as well as the Collinsville Study Club and the Historical Association and some other groupings of my Mother's hometown especially of the Baptist persuasion read Marsh in the next year and half.

If they do they can meet their maker having taken much deeper stock of themselves.

We don't know. She will be living in the Curtis Williams home right behind the Collinsville Baptist Church for the summer. She's a Graduate of Christ Presbyterian Academy in Nashville a PCA church so her outloook looks cooked in the world of Richard Land. I could be wrong.

Is up for Re-Election to Bama State Executive Committee June 3. She sometimes sits on same pew at FBC Ft Payne with the Crowes, who are the parents of Cherilyn, one of the best products of this county, a staffer with the BJUC.

But Marey Anne is hardwired to Eunie Smith, Albert Lee's widow of the Eagle Forum, the Birch Society and the draconian immigration bill that woulda deported half Collinsville's soccer team.

What Mary Anne and her sympathizers need to do is have a devotional reading of Tracy Thompson's The New Mind of the South. Mary Anne was raised in Jerry Vines West Rome Baptist Church. Her political bent and understanding of Alabama history is as skewed and tragic as Vines understanding of the Best of the Baptist tradition.

Mary Anne is in the majority in the State, Her Tea Party has Governor Bentley by The Balls--as Colson told Nixon, when you got em by the Balls, their Hearts will Follow, but her power shoulda gone long time ago.

I hope a few folks at Collinsville Baptist have the discernment to get this stepsister of Jesse Helms out of the way.

But if she wants to include me in an ensemble at the Opera House, well I'm game to consider a Patriotic number and a Sacred Number of Two.

Every body runnin is either a Devout Christian or a Solid Christian with a Christian World View so for the Most Part I went with the Devouts.

Lest night I attended the City Council Meeting in Collinsville. The Librarian who is also the Church Historian--see the first entry on this stream that is now approaching 7,000 hits--was there to introduce the young woman in the area this summer with the Auburn University Living Democracy Project. The leader of that group, Mark Wilson is active in Progressive Baptist life in Aalbama but it seems that message is not connecting with the Study Clubs in Collinsville. The STudy Club will sponsor a reception for the AULD young Woman Thursday at the Library.

I voted against Eunie Smith's hard-wrired friend Mary Anne Cole, but more than happy to continue congregational singing with her on the occasions I visit FBC Ft. Payne Alabama.

Brett was in Collinsville in 92 to do the doc Blessings of Liberty. I was his consultant then, and Bill Wyman is his consultant on the Stones. So there you have my connection to the Rolling Stones.

For a fact one friend from Gaffney and another from Collinsvile helped me identify a poignant song in the segment of Hurricane on the passing of Brian Jones, No Expectations. Keith Richards is hilarious throughout. Some may remember Johnny Depp wanted him to play a part in the Pirates movie and for all but the most doubting, it is self evident the casting call on that one.

I have been invited to hear a Rev Carr in Revival at Liberty Hill Baptist next week. I may go out for a session.

At the invitation of Payton, Jakes first cousin, I attended revival services last night at Liberty. My Mother sang there in an all day singing with her borthers and sisters in the 34 or so, just across the bridge at Big Will's Creek.

Brother Alan Carr who has the presence and delivery of a NE Alabama Caucasian TD Jakes did a masterful presentation of the story of Elijah and the widow woman who by faith h was rewarded with a three year's supply of meal.

I doubt Brother Alan will be joining the progressive Baptist movement anytime soon, but in his genre he in an adept, gifted.

As he pinpointed several ironies in the story, with no malice I want to point out that his first cousin's former great uncle or third cousin by marriage was the fellow who wrote OUtlaw Josey Wales, and George Wallace's 1963 Gubernatorial Inauguration speech.

Bible says in My House are many mansions, and as such was an existential Holy Moment last night just two miles west of exit 205 in Collinsville.

Met July 14 at the Armory where their museum is housed on the day there was a runoff in the GOP. We did not vote on the new congressman Gary Palmer to replace Spencer Bachus in the Hoover district, the famous MTV High School.

Jerry Dunn, subject of a recent article in Mother Jones was defeated 59-41 percent by the Mike Hubbard Big Dog Republicans in the state.

There were only 24 people to vote in my precinct.

In the Historical Society meeting I overheard the vote was near unanimous to let CBC historian and town librarian Jennifer Wilkins handle getting 450 70 page pamphlets for this year's Turkey trot. Some of them have been very interesting, especially the 2004 or so issue that had a reprint of an Alabama History Quarterly piece on the Turkey trot of 1927 or so, Had a great phrase about wildly flapping gobblers.

I don't think this means Ms. Wilkins has editorial control of the pamphlet, for if she does my chances of having my blog tribute to my Mother are pretty much nil.

The young woman of the AULD was there to cover the meeting. I will link her report if I see one.

Anopther summer is near gone and there is no evidence any of the influential folks in town have given a thought to Hal Crowthers review in Last summer's Oxford American of Tracy Thompson's New MInd of the South, and nearby anniston editor ayres In Love with Defeat